o perform the test, all you need is your weight and age and to
walk one mile. Before the walk, warm up with some stretching.
After the warm up, walk one mile as fast as possible and note
the time it took you. Immediately after finishing the mile, take
your pulse. The equation for estimating your VO2/Kg follows:

The idea that the human body cannot survive without
oxygen has been known for millennia. However, the notion that oxygen and
its delivery and subsequent metabolism by exercising muscles is crucial
to prolonged activity is relatively new, having first gained attention
in the 1920s with the work of the English physiologist A. V. Hill.

Christensen [2] noted that there was a
large variation in the heart rate response to exercise between subjects
and that those subjects who performed regular physical activity typically
had lower heart rates at a fixed workload as compared to their untrained
counterparts.

While early studies concluded
that the size of a person's heart was largely dependent on training status
and subsequently was an accurate determinant of aerobic performance, these
conclusions lacked substantial concrete evidence.

Procedures now allowed for the measurement of oxygen
content in the arterial blood as well as oxygen content in the venous blood
which could be used to extrapolate how much oxygen was extracted by the
working muscles at the cellular level.

he question then arises: what defines a fit person?
At this particular point in time, most agree that aerobic capacity is the
best indicator of overall fitness. As the field of exercise physiology
evolves, this idea may change or it may remain the same. Occasional paradigm
shifts are to be expected in a field as young and imperfect as exercise
physiology.

Results. Race times at 10, 21.1, and 42.2 km of the specialist marathoners were faster than those of the ultra-marathoners, however, only the 10 km time differed significantly. Lactate turnpoint occurred at 77.4% of VO2max and at 74.7% of peak treadmill velocity. The average VO2 at 16 km/h was 51.2 ml/kg/min which represented 78.5% of VO2max.

The opening paragraph of this gives are great general overview and simple discription and definition of VO2 max. Your first paragraph should be similar to this so readers know what you are talking about when you get into the details

the opening paragraph for this is a great general discription, you should incorparate this style of general definition into you 1st paragraph just so readers know what they are learning about instead of being a lil lost

2 Max measures how efficiently one's body breathes in oxygen, then attaches the oxygen to red blood cells through hemoglobin, then transports the oxygen throughout one's body, said Ayles. Click here for "Ask the Expert" Training toward a Goal.

But something else happened as a result of all those workouts: blood flowed at a much higher volume to a part of the brain responsible for neurogenesis. Functional M.R.I.’s showed that a portion of each person’s hippocampus received almost twice the blood volume as it did before.

VO2 Max. Serious exercisers may use a VO2 max calculation, which measures the amount of oxygen consumed during intensive, all-out exercise. The most accurate testing method uses computers, but anyone can estimate V02 without instrumentation (with an accuracy of about 95%):

After running at top pace for 15 minutes, round off the distance run to the nearest 25 meters.

Divide that number by 15.

Subtract 133.

Multiply the total by 0.172, then add 33.3.

Olympic and professional athletes train for VO2 max levels above 80. But for the average person interested in fitness, a VO2 max equaling between 50 and 80 is considered an excellent score for overall fitness.

"I'm sure there are other Lances out there who have the same potential," he added. But they may not know it because they never tried to train. "They could get on a bicycle right now," he said, "and if they were willing to suffer they could ride with the average person who's been training for two years."